"We're not drug cheats," that's the belief Essendon coach James Hird adamantly maintains, as the ASADA investigation into their supplement program drags on.

Ian Hanke, in 2004. Picture: Ray Strange Source: The Advertiser

HE used to shave his head before election campaigns and was accused of heading a Liberal Party dirt unit - meet Ian Hanke, the man in charge of James Hird's public relations.

As the Essendon drugs scandal has blown up, the under-pressure Hird has recruited a team of high-powered advisors.

That group includes Hanke, who started working with Hird in May.

He came to public attention last Friday when AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou suggested a caller to 3AW was employed by Hanke.

Hanke has been better known over his long career in media strategy career as one of Australia’s pre-eminent practitioners of the dark arts of politics.

Working for Liberal Party heavyweights such as John Howard and Peter Reith, he made a name for himself by being both effective and eccentric.

Here’s a potted history of Hanke’s colourful career:

* HE began as a cadet journalist at The Age in 1976. After stints with AAP and the ABC, he left journalism in 1982 to become an oil field diver.

* Even his sporting pursuits are unusual: In his 20s, he represented Australia several times in the modern pentathlon (swimming, running, pistol shooting, fencing and horse riding).

* Hanke rose to prominence as advisor to then Workplace Relations minister Peter Reith during the acrimonious attempt to break the dockworkers’ unions in 1998.

* He takes political campaigning VERY seriously. He used to shave his head at the start of every campaign, and this is how he described a regular day on the trail to The Age in 2002: “My day starts about 4.30. I get up, have a couple of cups of coffee and some nails (cigarettes) and read the papers, marking them up with a highlighter, looking for how we went that day and points of attack for the other side.” He’s at the office before six, trailing the leader during his morning gigs – “You can get a real feel for the campaign when you’re out on the stump. You don’t want to be isolated in an office” – and then bunkering down with him in the afternoon.

* He’s good at what he does. In the 2001 Federal Election, he led a team that scoured Labor press releases and transcripts for slip-ups; he then sent text messages to reporters on the road with Kim Beazley. The Liberal Party later estimated that 90 per cent of Beazley’s press conferences had at least one question from Hanke’s messages.

* That doesn’t mean he’s always been successful. He was a key man in Reith’s failed attempt to break the unions, nor did Hanke succeed in getting Robert Doyle elected as Victorian Premier in 2002.

* During the 2004 Federal Election campaign, then Opposition Leader Mark Latham accused Hanke of leading a “dirt unit”, to dig up negative stories. Hanke rejected the allegation: "I have not and do not trade in personal gossip, nor have I been involved in any exercise to unearth such material," the statement said. "Nor do I head or work for any so-called 'dirt unit' ". But as he told The Age: "I don't mind a fight. I just like to hunt the bastards basically."

"We're not drug cheats," that's the belief Essendon coach James Hird adamantly maintains, as the ASADA investigation into their supplement program drags on.

* This is how Christian Kerr described him in The Age in 2004: “Hanke makes a great pantomime villain - tall, lean, shaved head, a scar on his chin, a fag in one hand, a drink in another and a line in patter that would do any East End villain proud.”

* The Labor side of politics doesn’t like him very much. He once crashed Labor's Christmas drinks at Parliament House in Canberra. When Labor stalwart Laurie Brereton immediately demanded that he leave, Hanke pointed out that he'd paid the $10 entry fee. Brereton offered him $20 to leave, which Hanke reluctantly accepted, squaring his debts by leaving $10 at the door.

* At one stage, his voicemail was him reading a stanza from the poem The Call by Thomas Osbert Mordaunt: "Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife/Throughout the sensual world proclaim/One crowded hour of glorious life/Is worth an age without a name." Then Hanke added: "If you want to fill my hour, leave a message and I'll talk to ya. Thank you. Cheers."

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